Does the Tacoma Police Department have too much money to throw around and too many officers at its disposal?

How else to explain the fact that it has been paying cops to play against city firefighters in an annual fundraiser?

Thanks to a whistleblower’s complaint, the City of Tacoma acknowledged the practice this week. On May 29, a basketball team’s worth of officers did their hook shots and rebounds on the public’s dime during a game that raises money for the Hilltop Action coalition.

City officials confirmed Tuesday that the cops got a full 10-hour shift’s work of pay for their pseudo-charitable participation in the roughly two-hour event. Additional officers reportedly had to cover actual police work the players weren’t doing during those lost shifts. The players were also paid to practice for the game.

Whose genius idea was this?

It should be blindingly obvious to anyone in the TPD and city government that police time is one of the scarcest commodities in Tacoma.

Tacoma’s commissioned officers are well-paid professionals. Because budgets are finite, there are never enough of them on the streets to catch all the crooks and predators that need catching. An officer “dispatched” to a basketball game is not being dispatched to a burglary or rape.

It makes no difference if other officers are called in to cover for them. Either those other officers have to be paid overtime, or the public loses a day of their skills and presence.

Given the fixed budget, the net result is the same: fewer cops on the street.

It’s not unreasonable to assume that more crimes are committed when officers are paid to romp on the court with their rivals from the Tacoma Fire Department.

The May 29 game raised about $7,000 for the Hilltop Action Coalition. The department hasn’t been in a rush to disclose how much of its payroll has been blown on hoops, but 10-hour shifts for an entire team of cops could easily run into the thousands of dollars – not counting anything spent on training for the big event.

The coalition might as well skip the middleman and ask the city for a handout.

This is more evidence that the City of Tacoma feels a lot more flush than the taxpayers it is supposed to serve. If the city government has the money to subsidize basketball games and pass around generous salary increases, it surely could be doing more to fix Tacoma’s decrepit back streets.